With a metre wingspan, a wicked bite and a face straight out of a creature feature, you'd be hard pressed to describe spectral bats as cute. But new research shows the apex predator is much more social — and cuddly — than we thought.

Published in PLOS One on Wednesday , researchers at the Museum of Natural History in Berlin documented complex social behaviours in a wild group of for the first time

Following a family of four, they found the bats greet each other when returning to the nest, share prey, co-parent their young, and sleep in tight huddles, among other behaviours.

Lead author Marisa Tietge said she came across a roost by chance in a hollow tree, while studying a different bat species in Guanacaste, Costa Rica. She installed a motion-activated camera in the base of the tree t

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